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PALESTINE
: Silwad, a History of Revolts

On
the outskirts of the village of Silwad
an old man is busy hoeing his field --
a small field, barely a hectare in size.
Just behind, the mountain rises sharply.
There are several stone-built houses at
the bottom of the cliff, and the soft
light in the last days of winter gives
a special colour to the freshly turned
earth.

The photographer could not resist taking
a picture. The old man protested and shouted
something in Arabic. The interpreter translated:
“Take this as well. It is all I
have left. After that it is all gone”.
He was convinced that we were Israeli
surveyors making a search before confiscating
his land. Our interpreter, a student from
Bir Zeit University had a hard time convincing
him that we were not Israelis but European
journalists.

8.000 Palestinians from Silwad in
Kuwait

Silwad is a Palestinian village like
the others. Since 1967 through emigration
it has lost 14.000 of its 19.000 inhabitants.
There are about 8.000 Palestinians from
Silwad in Kuwait alone, and there are
also some in South America, especially
Brazil. Even here, with a bit of luck,
one can drink Brazilian or Colombian coffee
served by a waiter in traditional dress
who will trade a few words of Spanish
or Portuguese.

The
18.000 dunums of land belonging to the
village extends from the djebel Ashour
(the tallest mountain in the West Bank)
through the narrow neighbouring terraced
valleys to the Ramalla road and the plain
where the farmers of Silwad till the fields
with ancient wooden horse-drawn ploughs.
There used to be about one dunum per person,
but since the Israeli occupation in 1967
land seizures have considerably reduced
the area.

In 1972, the Israelis took between 4.000
and 5.000 dunums (more than 500 hectares)
beneath djebel Ashour to put up a military
camp. Then in 1974, there was another
seizure for the establishment of the Israeli
settlement of Ophra. “Before 1967”,
Moussa Mahmoud Hamed, the Mayor of Silwad,
explained, “the Jordanian Government
confiscated a hundred dunums to build
a camp. Then in 1974, the Israelis established
the settlement on this “government”
land, taking an additional 2.000 dunums
from the villagers”.

Not long ago, the Mayor received notification
from the Military Governor of the West
Bank forbidding the villagers to construct
new buildings in a 2.000 dunum zone between
the village and the Ramalla road and comprising
most of the flat cultivable land. To the
Mayor, it is obvious the Israelis intend
to double the size of Ophra.

Like other Palestinian villages, having
already lost many of its inhabitants and
most of its land, Silwad resisted the
Israeli occupation. “In 1968”,
the Mayor recalled “a curfew was
imposed twice a week, Thursdays and Sundays,
and the men of the village were confined
for hours in the sun in the school yard”.

The first revolt in 1972

The first “revolt” came in
1972 with the first land confiscation,
when the Mayor and his friends organised
a demonstration in cooperation with the
mayors of neighbouring communities. There
were more demonstrations in 1974 with
the establishment of the Ophra settlement.

And
the result of these 10 years of occupation
and repression? “You can safely
assume that there is not a single inhabitant
who has not been arrested at least once”.
At the end of December 1978 the toll was
20 people in prison, some still awaiting
trial. Five had been sentenced to prison
for life, nine had been exiled, and 10
houses had been destroyed either by dynamite
or by bulldozers.

To understand the effect this repression
has had on the inhabitants, one has only
to listen to women and the children. Even
though for the most part they do not know
how to read, they have a level of political
awareness worthy of any student from Bir
Zeit, the nearby Palestinian university.

Aisha is the wife of the “dean”
of prisoners from Silwad. Her husband,
Zaineddin, will be 80 next August. She
received us, sitting on a mat on the ground
near the door of the one room that comprises
her home. Aisha, aged about 60, is still
a strong woman. Almost without emotion,
even smiling occasionally, she recalled
the tragedy which befell her family when
the Israelis arrested her husband.

“On 12 August, 1969 the Israelis
arrived at 4.00 in the morning. They asked
for my husband. he had half-opened the
door, they pushed it and came in, then
grabbed the old man, pinned him to the
ground and hit him with their rifle butts.
They said that they had found arms hidden
in the mountain that he had hidden, and
they took him away. The next morning they
brought him back and went up to the mountain
to look for the arms. He wanted something
to drink but they forbade us to give him
water”. At that time two of their
three daughters, one of their four sons,
and Zaineddin’s old mother, were
living with them.

Later the Israeli soldiers came back
and blew up the house and now Aisha lives
in one room with her 13-year-old son,
Jemal. “Rent? The owners do not
ask for money. They feel sorry for me.
My other sons are in Kuwait but they cannot
help me. They all have children”.

Zaineddin was first taken to the prison
in Ramalla, and tried to escape by jumping
over a wall. One of his friends managed
to get away, but Zaineddin broke his leg.
He was sentenced to 75 years in prison
and was taken to Nablus. He is now in
prison in Ashkelon. “It will be
10 years next August since he went to
prison”, Aisha explained. “He
will be 80”. Their son Jemal can
only remember his father in prison.

Aisha sees her husband once a month,
“thanks to the red Cross, because
we do not have any money”. She said
that on the first Friday of each month
a Red Cross car took them to Ashkelon.
“It takes us the whole day from
6 am to 6pm, just to see him for half
an hour”.

Her husband sits on one side of a barrier
and she sits on the other. It is forbidden
to take fruits, clothes, or anything except
money. She takes whatever she can afford,
usually 30 to 100 Israeli pounds.

She described a typical visit: “When
I sit down with my husband the soldiers
are seated on either side of us. With
one soldier for each prisoner, we cannot
say anything. He says to me, “How
are you”? I tell him, “I hope
you are well. Your sons send their regards”.
Aisha said he was very courageous but
that he did nothing because he is very
old. “he lives in one room with
dozens of prisoners. If he wants to go
out into the sunshine he does a little
work, like sticking stamps on envelopes”.

She was uncertain what effect the negotiations
for autonomy might have. “The prisoners
hope to be freed but they are not sure.
All I can say is God will help us”.

All this time a neighbour who was sitting
on a mat beside Aisha listened without
saying anything. Her face was a picture
of indescribable sadness, and we learned
her story first from another neighbour.
Her two sons had been arrested in September
and she had not had any news from them
since.

“The first time”, Amina explained
later, “they came at 4pm. My son
Muhammad, aged 15, was playing. They took
him saying, “we are investigating
him”. He was accused of being a
member of the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine. Eleven days later they arrested
the second son Abdel-Hamid.

“This time it was 11.00 at night.
Tanks surrounded the house. The Israelis
knocked at the door and saw my two daughters
and my son sleeping. They asked, “How
many sons do you have”? I told them,
“You have taken Muhammad, there
is Abdel-Hamid”. They woke him up,
took his Jordanian passport, and his identity
card. They searched the house but did
not find anything”.

Abdel-Hamid was accused of being a member
of a group which had assassinated Jenho,
a “collaborator” from Ramalla,
who was killed in his shop on the main
street on the night of the Good Friday.
A few days after the arrest, Israeli soldiers
came to measure the house to blow it up.
But Israeli lawyer Felicia Langer, who,
with Lea Tsemel defends Palestinian political
prisoners, managed to stop it.

Halima’s luck has been no better.
Her house was one of the first to be destroyed
by the Israelis, on 13 June, 1968. Six
days before the Israelis had surrounded
the house at midnight and had arrested
her husband, Hussain Ibrahim, a stone-cutter.
“Five days later they came back
and measured the house”. She thought
they were making another search, but the
next day they returned and told her, “You
had better be out in 20 minutes”.
“I asked them”, “are
you going to blow up my house”?
They said “yes”. I told them,
“but you have searched the house
and found nothing”. Then I started
to cry. The children helped me take out
a few things. The first explosion was
not enough, they had to go back to Ramalla
for more explosives”.

Her husband was in prison for six months
without trial. She could not attend the
trial because she did not have an identity
card. Normally a wife appears on her husband’s
card, and when the Israelis took her husband’s
papers they had left her without any.

Hussain Ibrahim was sentenced to five
years in prison for membership of Fateh.
“He spent two years there and was
exiled to Jordan at the beginning of the
civil war (September 1970) on the assumption
that the Jordanians would kill him. It
was the Mayor of Silwad who told me that
they had released him, he saw it in the
newspaper”.

Halima’s third son Abdel-Rahim
was arrested one year after his father,
and he too was accused of being a member
of Fateh: he was imprisoned for 13 months
and was exiled to Jordan with his father.
And just six months ago, her 22-year-old
son Hassan was arrested. “Nobody
has seen him since”, she said, then
corrected herself, “his lawyer,
that woman (Lea Tsemel), she saw
him, she said he was OK”.

Asked about plans for autonomy, Halima
answered simply, “Anything as long
as I see my sons again”.

Adnan, aged 19-and-a-half, was arrested
on 11 July 1977, accused of being a member
of Fateh. He was beaten up for 12 days
until he signed a confession in Hebrew
which he did not understand, admitting
membership of a secret organisation.

He was brought to trial about six months
later and sentenced to a year in prison.
The year ended a few months ago, and his
identity card now has a special stamp.
Any Israeli patrol checking him knows
immediately he was a member of a secret
organisation and he must not leave the
West Bank.

His brother, Mahmoud, was arrested in
1968 when he was 22, accused of being
a member of Fateh. The Israelis blew up
his house soon afterwards.

On 4 December 1978, at 4am, an Israeli
Army bulldozer demolished the house of
Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Fattah, although Felicia
Langer had obtained a stay of execution
for a tribunal of three judges to hear
her plea. The soldiers pretended that
they had not received the counter-order
in time.

Abdel-Rahman was not guilty of anything,
but his 16-year-old son, Akram, had been
accused of being involved with the Palestinian
cell which assassinated Jenho, the “collaborator”.
But the Jerusalem Post reporting the incident,
continued to insist that the house belonged
to Akram, whose age it did not mention
and described its demolition as “a
measure of dissuasion”.

Rima, a tiny, thin woman of 71, as gnarled
as olive bark, told how her daughter,
Fatma, a nurse, had been arrested twice.
In 1970 she spent eight months in prison
and in 1971 she spent another six months
in prison awaiting trial on charges
of carrying arms”.

“They arrested my daughter, and
the next day they measured the house”,
Amina said, “Eighteen days passed
and I thought they were not going to blow
it up, but they did. I shouted at the
soldiers, “kill me first”.
But they pushed me and told me to get
out. I tried to kill myself with
a big stone but some friends stopped me.
Since then I often have had headaches”.

She also told of her own imprisonment.
“I was the first to go to prison,
before my daughter. I spent three days
there and paid a fine 10 Jordanian dinars”.
Then she added, “When they came
to blow up the house they told the Mayor
they were teaching the village a lesson.
But we did not learn anything, we are
still revolutionaries”.